Comments on: Crack in a Labradorite – How Did it Happen?

By: Michelle Marquis

Michelle Marquis — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 14:19:09 +0000

I have a beautiful labradorite stone with red dot and blue in middle, I noticed stone cracked horizontally and vertically like a cross and my stone I could feel the vibration from it , should I replace it or is still protection wise good

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 20:42:51 +0000

Absolutely lovely stone. Labradorite is my favorite.

I have nothing to offer as to why it cracked, I just wanted to offer a compliment on the stone.

Is there anyway to stabilize the stone?

By: andrew rubly

andrew rubly — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 04:27:16 +0000

Labradorite is a member of the feldspar family and has natural cleavage lines. The stone may be perfect, but if struck, dropped, or sometimes just heated, cracks or fractures can appear. Looking at this stone, i would guess that the line in the middle had some unseen inclusions that over time weakened the stone along a concealed weak plane in the stone.

By: Rena Klingenberg

Rena Klingenberg — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 16:04:51 +0000

In reply to ben.

Welcome, Ben – and thank you for sharing your expertise! 🙂

By: ben

ben — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 15:41:05 +0000

HI Barbara,
My name’s Ben, nice to make your acquaintance 🙂
I’m new at this website, but I do have quite a lot of experience with gems, and with customers 🙂

well, the answer is yes – Labradorite can break. It may look sudden, but a small unseen crack can easily grow after setting. The pendant you’ve made was worn by a customer for a while, and even if it wasn’t dropped, there’s more than fair chance that it got a few small hits – when taking it on and off, when jogging, doing the dishes etc..

I’ve had similar a case with stones that are just as hard and even a bit harder. we’ve got our hands on a stock of Amethyst facets, cut and polished which looked great. They were set and used, and after a little while we started receiving messages from customers regarding cracks showing out of thin air.

There’s always a chance your customer dropped it without noticing, but it is possible that the crack just appeared. Plus, I saw your lovely store and you are quite generous with the size of stone you’re using 🙂 and the bigger it is, the chances of it cracking at some point increases!

I hope this helps.
Ben.